I am rarely first at anything “public”, so I get pretty excited when I win! I’m one of those miserable people who always completes term papers and important projects early, but public recognition just makes everyone else feel bad.

First! Wow….all I can say is that I am thankful I no longer serve in this kind of environment. The interesting part is that many of the activities on the list aren’t even appealing, but my reasons are based on the freedom I have in Christ instead of a bunch of nit-picky rules.

You know as well as I do there were ways of watching movies. One of my roommates had 100’s on his computer. lol That would be one of the few things I did against the rules. lol We also used to go play basketball at the short courts on Saturdays. You were not supposed to do that either. It is just like when government tries to sticks its nose into everything. It makes law abiding citizens criminals.

There’s a big difference between Saving Private Ryan and 50 Shades of Gray–both are rated “R”. Why bother learning to discern the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and foster that relationship when you can instead live by such simplistic and legalistic rules?

This isn’t the student handbook, though. These are guidelines for the faculty and staff. It’s a much stronger indicator of their worldview that they don’t even trust the people commissioned with educating students academically, emotionally, and spiritually to make their own decisions about movies.

I’ll tell ya’, the kind of garbage we put in our minds is alarming. People just don’t respect themselves any more. I’ll never forget something Robert Kyosaki wrote: I’m a New York Times best selling author, not a NYT best writing author.

The one semester I attended was the year that The Passion of the Christ came out and Mullenix preached an entire sermon on why it was the devil because it came from Hollywood. They pretty much do all of the discerning for you and you get to hear about it during “worship” services.

And meanwhile I’ve gotten the reverse, repeatedly, through even this year.

Because apparently I really haven’t thought all the way through what he went through for me unless I watch that particular film.

Because I know how potent visuals of the crucifixion are for me and actively avoid them except around Easter. (Some of the same people got on my case for hiding my eyes during a not quite that bloody but pretty bad crucifixion scene in a movie shown to us in children’s church when I was oh, *seven*.)

And because apparently watching a movie of Jesus getting beat up once is better than reading pretty well researched books about the crucifixion over the course of years. Those, I can handle.

Do these people REALLY think that playing spades, listening to U2, dancing at a wedding, and cooking with sherry would destroy a Christian’s testimony “with the surrounding community”? C’mon, we all know that’s not true. The “surrounding community” could care less, because even unbelievers have a better sense of what’s truly evil than these fundamentalists.

I didn’t even think that card playing was still an issue ANYWHERE! This kind of legalism is stultifying.

For them it’s not “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another,” it’s “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you appear so out of touch with culture, others will mysteriously want to be like you and ask about Jesus.”

Bono’s theology is pretty rock solid, perhaps even more so than most evangelicals. I’ve not read the whole book, but read multiple excerpts from “In Conversation with Michka Assayasand” in which Bono explains how he has reconciled being a rock star with his professed faith in Christ, and he makes some brilliantly, truthful points about the magnitude of God’s grace. There’s also some pretty good theology in many of their songs but what does it matter, it’s all “devil music”.

Agreed. The only people who care whether or not you have a glass of wine with dinner are Fundies themselves. It does not hurt my testimony one iota if my neighbor sees me with a bottle of wine in my shopping cart at the market.

When you are caught up in Fundyland “keeping your testimony” in these ways seem so important, but the truth is that it does not really matter at all.

Your neighbor does not care if you have a glass of wine with dinner or if they see you with a bottle of wine in your shopping cart. They could not care less if you go to the movies with your family or play cards together, although they might appreciate an invitation to join you.

What has really hurt the testimony of Fundies is how they look the other way when their leadership is abusive, covers for abuse, or welcomes known abusers back in the church.

This is where Fundies have totally ruined their testimony. How much easier it is to mark off a checklist of stupid, insignificant items than to really love your neighbor as yourself!

Some years ago, I remember hearing Dr. Dobson inveigh against card playing, on Focus on the Family. I was surprised, because I’d always thought he was a pretty reasonable guy. He even blasted penny-ante card games, which is what my and my husbands’ relatives have been playing forever and ever. I’ve never been keen on cards (or board games, for that matter), but all my relatives dote on that stuff. And they literally play for pennies. But supposedly that’s the Slippery Slope to high-stakes gambling in Vegas. Or something.

We Cradle Catholics have a hard time understanding that stuff. But then, fundies have a hard time understanding the stuff we do, too. 😉

Sounds about right. People who exercise their liberty really don’t care about people who don’t. But people who think liberty is wrong (or what people do with liberty is wrong) care deeply to try to stop people from having it.

People enslaved to a tyrant deity hate those who aren’t. It isn’t like atheists are at war with peoples’ freedom to believe, just with the determination fundies have to take away their right to not believe.

Big Gary. I have never been tattooed after taking alcohol, so i cant make a comparison, but I imagine it would not diminish the pain. In fact I suspect the opposite may be true. Anyway, how much pain depends on the part of the body being tattooed. The least painful would be the shoulders and the outsides of the arms. Like being scratched with a hot red hot darning needle. The most painful for me is the ribcage – hot needle multiplied by 8 or 9. I can’t say I enjoy the process, but the end result can look really cool. 🙂

Raise your hand if you want to attend a church where the pastor and deacons are liquor-swilling, card gamblin’, rock music lovin’, dirty movie-watching, cigar-chompin’ Masons who then proceed to serve the Lord’s Supper to people who do the same. Something doesn’t seem right about that, but I just can’t put my finger on it.

And PCC practices what they call open communion. David B doesn’t really describe it as even closed communion though, he’s saying that a person giving the communion that imbibes negates the communion for the partaker, which is explicitly Donatist and acknowledge as heresy by all denominations I know of.

I found several things hilarious about your responses. First, the old “you’re a heretic” argument was trotted out and paraded around for a while till you got tired of that. Second, the old Rob Bell refrain of “Love wins” was shouted (while not actually showing any). Let’s be honest–the ‘love’ and ‘freedom in Christ’ mantras is just a fancy way of dressing up tolerance for sin. Third, and this actually produced a full-throated belly laugh from me, is that most of you still got a lot of Fundy in you. You couldn’t resist a good old fashioned altar call. There you stand with your hands raised admitting you’re a sinner in need of a Saviour. You can put them down now while the organist plays and I pray for you.

For anyone out there reading this I’m responding simply because I have seen this brought up again and again in the form of an accusation….Yes there is still a lot of ‘fundy’ in some of the posters here. They know it and admit to it. They realize that sometimes it can take years to get that way of thinking out of the brain. The rest of us understand it because we’ve been there.

David B – Maybe I am missed something, but if you don’t understand why some of us said we raised out hand, you really have no clue. If you do understand why we said that, then your attempt at being witty and humorous has failed miserably.

How could my simple question elicit such responses filled with vitriol and hate? It is rather simple. My question revealed the state of most ex-fundies whether they want to admit it or not. They are no closer now to the Lord than they were before. They have simply traded one form of idols for another albeit of their own making. It sounds good to say you are an ex-Fundy until someone shows you what it means.
For example, gay marriage sounds beautiful–happy people in love. Show the public what it actually involves sexually and it loses its appeal.
Abortion is a “women’s right” yet no one wants to look at the bloody, mangled arms and legs and heads that result from it.
Drinking is extolled while the broken homes, destroyed lives, and crumpled cars are hidden from view.
What does it mean to be an ex-Fundy to some? It’s not the rejection of man’s faults and errors that have hindered the Gospel. It’s the full rejection of the Gospel and the Word of God.
Reject Hyles, Sexton, Jones, Mutsch or whomever. But don’t reject the faith starting with Creation and continuing on from there.

David, you are telling us to reject the men but continue to accept their message. I contend that if the messenger is corrupt, you cannot trust their message or interpretation.

Am I closer to the Lord than I was when I was in fundamentalism? Maybe not. But at least I am further from their false god. I am seeking the Lord, if He really exists. Almost anything would be better than that all-powerful Egomaniac and Sadist. Because this is what they have reduced the Almighty to.

So in leaving fundamentalism, I have left dishonest certainty for honest doubt. Perhaps the “salvation” offered in fundamentalism is a fraud, and your closeness to God simply illusory. Certainly it doesn’t seem to save anyone from their sinning, only making it easier to sin and escape responsibility.

If “God” wishes to reveal Himself, I am all for it. But the wickedness of fundamentalism is not limited to a few bad actors. It is rotten to the core. It’s understanding of Scripture, of God, of self and the world is warped.

David B – What you are witnessing here is called freedom. For those like you who are still in bondage, it can be very uncomfortable to witness it. So uncomfortable that it makes you act like an ass. You are so out of touch with reality that I suggest you step away from the internet. You really can’t handle the truth yet.

Sounds like the Northern Ontario Catholic churches my husbands family go to. I have very fond memories of kind, hard working, drinking, swearing, smoking men standing awkwardly outside the church doors watching the children while the women gossiped in the basement after a funeral or wedding. Life sure wasn’t all good but it wasn’t fake piety either. You got what you saw. I’d take that any day over the fundy bastards I lived with.

No, I’d rather go to a church where “Pastor” has no visible faults (not that anything you listed is necessarily even a fault) – he hides them all instead (like enticing high school girls to sleep with him). Because serving the Lord’s Supper under those circumstances is no problem.

Hmm, the church I attend pretty much fits your description, David B. Except I don’t think they’re Masons (though I think at least one member of the congregation is) and the movies probably depend on what your definition of “dirty” is.

They’re also some of the finest Christian people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Nobody from Fundyland even comes close.

For anyone to love, love, love Two Kingdom Theology, you’d have to believe that the things you mentioned in your first post are contrary to what’s taught in the Bible. It’s not that I believe Christians should be/act the same as their unbelieving counterparts, it’s that you’re condemning things that the Bible doesn’t say are sins.

I believe the accepted definition of a Christian is to be Christ-like? Then here you go. Those hard living men looked after everyone in those small towns. Even the ones that didn’t go to the Catholic church. They looked out for the drunks, the widows, the suicidal teenagers. They were even nice to judgemental, awkward, fundy me. On the other hand when my mother couldn’t get out on Sunday anymore, because of age and illness, the fundies stopped visiting. She was poor, her family was embarrassing and she became invisible. Pretty hard dealings after a lifetime of service.

Raise your hand if you want to attend a church where there is no such thing as a pastor who loves to have the preeminence over people in a position that is non-biblical, who takes the role of the Holy Spirit prescribing to his laity the means as to how they should conduct their personal lives instead of allowing them the freedom to make choices.

David B, the mystery is why you can’t put your finger on the fact that your eyes are completely focused on a man or men instead of on Christ.

If by “dirty movie-watching” you mean R rated, that sounds like most urban Episcopal churches I know. Actually, sounds a bit urban Catholic too, except for the Mason part (Catholics are forbidden to be Mason). And sounds fine to me.
They used to say about the Episcopalians, “Where two or three are gathered together, there’s bound to be a fifth.”

Because the moment you do any of those, you go crazy and are suddenly an alcoholic, addicted to gambling, porn and tobacco. Am I right? Look above. You might see a rock. Try pushing it out of the way and climbing out.

“But when you try those things, you run the risk of them becoming a vice.”

Anything and everything can become a vice. Even the coveted character of self-righteousness.

“We’re told to not be of this world. This makes you look like you’re of it.”

These are 5 items on a list of things to not do. You can walk into a mall and nobody will know the difference between you and the sober guy to your left. The Amish, on the other hand, have a couple of hundred more rules that they follow. They got all of you beat as far not being of this world. When they walk into a mall, I notice them right off the bat. Honestly, if you’re trying to not be of this world by following a bunch of rules, you all are pretty mediocre at it.

Lets just call it what it is, which I failed to do for almost two decades until I decided to be honest with myself: It’s like you chose the most convenient things to not do, things you already didn’t do. You made them into these vital, spiritual characteristics for being a Christian, and decided to pat yourself on the back for it.

We are never told that we “should” not be of the world; we are told that we “are” not of this world. Those pesky little helping verbs make a vital difference. Freedom in Christ is the “are not”; legalism is the “should not”. No number of external rules will make us into what we are not already in Christ. No number of sins or moral failings or exercising freedoms will take away what we already are.

Because if it isn’t rated G, it’s an orgy-fest of animal sacrifices and sexual celebration.

There’s a term for when someone brings up an absolute, and unrealistic worst-case-scenario of something in order to demonize something else. I wish I could remember what it is, but it’s pretty common in human psychology.

I attended PCC for two semesters in ’90 and ’91, and one of my most vivid memories of Dr. Mullenix was when we were almost ready for Christmas break. We had a “special” chapel, where the boys met in the gym, and the girls met somewhere else. Mullenix spent the whole time ranting about staying pure, exercising, taking cold showers, and the like. Being the sheltered IFB young man that I was, I really had no idea what he was going on about. When we got back to our dorm, my more “worldly” roommates informed me that he was talking about not masturbating when we were home on Christmas break. Totally went right over my head. I wonder if that happened every year.

Dude had a LOT of very weird ideas about sex, and explains his antsy demeanor in retrospect. We heard he only had sex on like birthdays and maybe a holiday or 2 . I prefer not to think about his or his wife’s predilections.

I think you guys’ chapel was more interesting than the girls’. I can’t remember what they talked about in split chapel, but they certainly never acknowledged that women masturbate too, so we weren’t warned about that. I hope I’m not going to hell now…

We did have plenty of classes on how we were all filthy temptresses trying to lure men into our beds.

Kaye – when I was in high school I was looking for those temptresses and they didn’t seem to be just standing around. But then again I didn’t hang out with fundys. Maybe its only fundy women who are the evil temptresses.

So no smoking, dancing, playing cards, gambling, liquor (in any form), porn, rock music or my secret society meeting that I can’t mention? They call that destroying a “testimony”. I call that Saturday night.

Sadly the kids sent to these funds schools are told they need to avoid “evil” secular schools that have only one goal – to indoctrinate them into worldly views. So instead they go to pcc, bju, etc and receive a sub par non accredited education that only excels at indoctrinating them into their peculiar beliefs. Kids that transfer between these schools often get their most of their credits to transfer except for their doctrines classes because the previous school just isn’t quite right. Funny how they are doing the exact thing they accuse secular schools of doing but justify by the right of God.

Ack, for the millionth time, PCC and BJU do not give subpar educations. Business, Education, Nursing, Math, and such are high-quality. HAC, somehow I doubt it if they even have those areas. The local church basement “college”, no way. Nothing ruins a good point like overselling it.

It depends entirely on the subject area. And really, having gotten a degree elsewhere afterward, I am tending more toward the “yes, they really do offer sub-par education” view. The absolute lack of any critical thinking, of any examination of differing viewpoints for any reason, of any recognition of salient perspectives that they may not agree with (yes you can recognize that someone else’s perspective has merit even when you think there is a better way)–all of these things combine to undermine the possibility of anything other than a mediocre-at-best level of education. They are decent at presenting objective fact to their students; outside of a small handful of teachers (and all the ones I had like this were squeezed out), they are exceptionally remiss at teaching students how to analyze and apply those facts. And that does, in fact, lead to a sub-par education.

BG, especially history. I went through A Beka for third grade through undergrad. I never learned about the Civil Rights movement. I thought slavery and oppression had all ended with Lincoln the great Christian President.

I received my Bachelors of Nursing in 2002 from PCC. I do not agree with the fundy teaching or lifestyle, but I WAS surprised that in our Psych class they did teach about ADD, ADHD, Schizo, Bipolar, depression. But from what I have seen, the nursing department at PCC kind of does their own thing. I am a guy, and we would often study or practice in the nursing lab unsupervised. This is shocking coming from a school that doesn’t allow men and women to walk in unapproved area together. FYI, i received a great nursing degree. I now have my Masters in Nursing from Texas A&M and I am a Nursing Director of a prominent chain of freestanding ER’s. So I cannot complain about the education that has me receiving 6 figures a year.

I hear ya, and I would never send one of my kids to such an institution. (They wouldn’t accept a papist heathen anyway. ;))

But, in certain disciplines, secular academia is just as close-minded. Some of the softer social sciences are so rigidly PC it’s ridiculous. Trust me. Just take a class where a couple of way-out-there Tumblr-ites hijack every discussion, and the professor’s too intimidated to do anything about it, and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

I think I’m with you on that. To be fair, I have both a fundy degree and a non-fundy degree. My non-fundy degree is from the University of Louisville – a good school, but hardly Ivy League. If educational quality is looked at as a spectrum, PCC’s education quality level is probably right where you put it.

If pcc and bju are the best that the fundy world has to offer then yes, I do consider the educational system sub par. The worst part of it, IMO, is how each institution indoctrinates students into their particular slice of fundy thinking.

Joshua Crosby, I attended PCC for a year, and, without hardly cracking a book, got a 3.5 gpa. Most of the classes I took were easier than their equivalents I took in high school. I then attended my local StateU, and applying the same academic effort, received a sub 2.0 gpa and academic probation.

Portions of my PCC education were excellent. Others were completely lacking. I took elementary education. I learned how to teach kids to read, manage a classroom well, and present guilt-inducing Bible lessons. I also learned excellent story-telling skills.
I managed to graduate with absolutely no math courses beyond a repeat of what I’d taken in 9th grade, and no lab sciences.
I also – and this was teacher prep, remember – had little to no training on teaching diverse students, such as ELL or ADHD, children from poverty or ones in the autism spectrum. I was actively taught not to assess children’s prior knowledge. And so on and so forth.
It was fine. I learned all those things as I went along. But grad school was definitely eye-opening!

Yes, Lady Semp. The rants I listened to basically said that you invited the devil in with things like drugs and Eastern Meditation, or Native American Rituals (gasp, oh the evil) and then you became possessed of him and IT WAS REAL and not a disease or chemical imbalance at all. I was told not to get my child assessed for dyslexia as the councillor would not be a Christian and might introduce something into her mind that would end with the devil having a way in. Turns out the councillor might have discovered she was being abused. How I wish I had found that out when she was younger.

HA”C” was actually a tough school to get a “degree” from, but that was because of the extracurricular demands/ expectations and not because of the difficulty of the coursework. They did not (and certainly still don’t) have a nursing program. They also would not have had any sort of business classes outside of maybe the secretarial program. Of course they did have the incredibly basic personal finance class. They did offer math and various science classes, but during my entire time there, I never saw a classroom devoted to lab use of any kind. They also offered education classes, but those classes, like all their other classes, would not have transferred to any public college or university and probably would have been essentially useless outside of Fundamentalism.

At one point the only two teachers with earned doctorates were Wendell Evans and Pete Cowling, and Evans’ PhD was from BJU and was not in a hard science, but in history. Mark Rasmussen later received an EdD, but that was from HA”C.” Incredibly Jim Jorgensen earned his undergad degree (possibly in mathematics) from Princeton University before graduating from to TTU’s seminary.

With all that said, there were some talented educators on the faculty of that institution and it was possible to find classes that were intellectually challenging if you were so motivated. Of course, you likely would only have been able to devote a decent effort to one or at most two of those classes per semester due to outside pressures. One bright spot was the English department and the women there did solid work at imparting the basics.

Like numbers of other folks here, I was forced to go back to school and eventually received a degree in mathematics from a generally undistinguished university that fortunately had at least some first rate professors. Afterwards I took chemistry classes at a decent junior college. Based on those experiences, I would judge that the most academically rigorous classes I took at HA”C” would (despite the course number) have been taught at maybe a 200 level. The typical classes were below this and the quality of some classes was absolutely dismal.

In spite of being considerably brighter than the typical Fundy preacher, I don’t think Jack Hyles placed much value on education outside of homiletics and English. Looking at things objectively, a “preacher boy” who shared Hyles’ educational philosophies was almost certainly going to leave that institution with seriously inadequate academic preparation. Taking into account academic inbreeding, unfotunately things have probably not improved since that time.

If we had been able to read on maybe it would have mentioned other things that dishonor God, like pride, spiritual arrogance, bitterness, hypocrisy, bigotry, intolerance, greed, hatred, gluttony…. no, wait……

BJ Jr. once said in chapel that it is hard to trust a man who is speaking through a beard. That’s why they had a ‘no facial hair’ rule, to help us as we go out in society. Guy next to me whispered, “Does he trust Jesus? Jesus had a beard.”

But in fact, they did change that racist rule. Now, your parents can sign a waiver that says they aren’t racist so it is ok for their son/daughter to date a member of the opposite color. Isn’t that wonderful!?

By the way , Jesus was Jewish. He wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near BJU. Unless he became a Fundamentalist Baptist, and even then he probably wouldn’t be trusted, any more than he was trusted by the First-Century Pharisees (for the same reasons)

It’s hard to trust a man speaking through a beard? What a weird bunch of prejudices that man had. He should’ve been ashamed of all his arbitrary, culture-bound (worldly) personal issues instead of proclaiming them proudly from the pulpit.

Sometimes I wonder if they (PCC administration) are trying to make themselves appear more spiritual by implying that they don’t keep up with all the latest developments from Hollywood, such as “PG-13” and “NC-17” ratings.

In our defense, when you stick a prompt that is perfect for a dating game format in a randomly assigned set AND don’t bother breaking up all the brother-sister sibling sets when you stick kids into groups, you are kind of asking for a ‘I met my girlfriend at the family reunion’ gag.

I remember thinking how weird that was – that the rulebook was secret and not shown to you until you already were there at the college. Having spent my whole life reading the Bible, I had ingested a lot of verses about being transparent and open and walking in the light not in darkness and so there secrecy seemed very strange to me.

It is the very embodiment of esoteric religions. The Secrets, the Mysteries are only open to the Initiates, and only a bit at a time. As they rise in rank they become privy to greater mysteries, some of which actually overturn all the previous, showing that they were lies. But one must never tell. Submission to ones’ masters and openness to complete indoctrination are required.

Murders have happened over the revealing of secrets In ages past. Do you want to believe that nefarious things don’t happen in IFB strongholds?

Something about this secrecy as opposed to the Biblical, ”the truth shall set you free”, that has always bugged me was what my father used to repeat about predestination. ”On the outside of the door to salvation it says Whosoever will may come. Once you have gone through and look back, over the inside of the door you see, Chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.” It just didn’t add up, as many things did not.

Miriam, that sounds like an H.A. Ironsides quote. I heard that quite a bit. I used to have his collected works. The PBs were proud of him!

The thing about the way people have accepted theology is they have created paradoxes — two perspectives which cannot be true at the same time, but which are asserted to be completely true by themselves. And we are told to accept these “mysteries” just because “God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts.”

As if the “doctrines” men concocted were God’s thoughts! Isn’t the hubris just overflowing at times? They are contortionists in the effort they make to pat themselves on the back!

The problem with “election” lies in the fact that it makes God to be completely immoral, arbitrary, and capricious. God “chooses” some to be saved — which means He has chosen the rest to be damned. No one, not even God, can choose to include without simultaneously choosing to exclude. Those who “get saved” are free from eternal punishment. But the rest have no choices, no options, and as such cannot be responsible for their own condition. So God judges them for His making them to sin.

If one wishes to view God’s created beings as something He can just trash and burn (eternal torture) and God Himself as being as without conscience, then perhaps such a scenario makes sense. But if God is “love,” if God is “holy,” if God is “just,” then such things cannot be. The God of Election, Death and Hell is a Monster. I no longer worship monsters.

I know. I know. Many people believe in Election. But theology, I think, should pass a kind of test. Does the theology enable wicked behavior by believers? If so, then the theology should be considered wrong.

Calvin was at ease torturing and killing Christians of different theological viewpoints because they were obviously not elect. The theology enabled burning of people at the stake, killing of native Americans for their lands, and a host of other evil doings.

Rtgmath, I like how you put it, theology should not allow a person to do evil things. I do think we need some sort of theology (I know you weren’t suggesting we have none) but when I read the Bible through, beginning to end, I don’t as much see the doctrines as when they are pulled out proof text by proof text. When I read it all, election and predestination are words that describe God in a way that I can’t fully understand, and I am comfortable with that.

I keep reminding myself that when I see God, I won’t be looking at a book of doctrines written in man’s tongue.

I’m struck by how much of this deals with Kingdom and addressing Jesus’ death and resurrection to the powers Jesus exposed by so doing. I mean how little.

Perhaps it really is all about performance. And since performance can be documented easily, we could create institutions geared to completing forms classifying and categorizing performance. Who knows! Perhaps we could even turn this into a ‘for profit’ religious business.

In 4th grade, my Sunday School teacher gave me a card game called Bible Daughters. You had to collect four of a kind (four Rachels, four Ruths, etc.) without getting the one leftover card (I don’t remember who was on that one. I don’t think it was just about! LOL). Is that Old Maid?

Anyway my small Christian school, at a different church, wouldn’t let me play that card game. Appearance of evil they called it. I was embarrassed and angry. I remember thinking, even though I was a really good girl and usually very obedient and compliant, that their forbidding my game was stupid!

I think it was designed to be like Go Fish, but there were instructions for taking three cards of one set out for something like Old Maid. Pretty much any game that operated off card values without paying attention to suits could be played on the deck if you tried hard enough to find a way.

For some odd, unfathomable reason, those Bible Daughters never seem to include Mary, even though she arguably played a more important role in salvation history than, say, Rachel.

Sorry. 🙂 That’s just a pet peeve of mine. I once listened to a Focus on the Family episode discussing Great Women of the Bible. Even though some New Testament women were mentioned (Lydia, Tabitha), there was not one single solitary mention of Mary. Not one.

But then, she was just the disposable wrapper Jesus came in, so how could she compare with Lydia? I mean, sure, there;s that Scriptural passage about all generations calling her blessed, but, if we just ignore inconvenient Scripture passages, then they really don’t exist, right?

So they have found that smoking, drinking alcohol, dancing, card playing, etc do not contribute to spiritual growth….then they were doing those things wrong and with the wrong people.

I have been in the presence of godly people who were drinking, smoking a pipe and playing cards–as they discussed some deep Scriptural truths and people left the table knowing Jesus better and encouraged to live differently.

As an IFB child, I used to worry about my Grandpa’s soul because he smoked, drank alcohol, chewed tobacco, was in a secret society, and cursed. Looking back now, I remember that he and Grandma sat down every morning, read their Bible together and prayed. He would then go about his day, fixing things and helping people when he could. He wasn’t showy with his faith. He kept it simple. now I am trying to lose all the “works” that no one notices but other Pharisees, and keeping it simple.

It is a very complex Issue so PCC has simplified it for its staff. If they were required to name the movies that violated their standards, then some really high up in the administration food chain would have to go watch the movie. Therefore, they have deferred that responsibility to Hollywood. Also, they’d be creating a “forbidden fruit” list which would have the reverse affect of attracting potential viewers.

But lets face it. Those rules are unenforceable. The days of stationing spies ouside movie theaters or video stores are long past since the staff can remain in their own homes and watch any movie they’d like. (Unless they’re required to submit to electronic monitoring.)

I hope there’s not some rule that requires use only of the “missionary position.”

Fundamentalism, by its very nature, is a reactive system. It cannot make decisions on its own. It has to have something to act against.

That shows how wrong it is right there. A “work of God” should be creative, not reactive. It should be creating good instead of hiding from evil. It should be finding a way to feed the hungry instead of railing against food stamps. It should find a better way to give health care to the poor, not strive to take it away because it doesn’t like the government.

That fundamentalism can only find its purpose in being “against” shows the poverty of its righteousness. It is depravity pretending to be grace.

Don’t like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare? Then you figure out a way to take care of all the sick, the aged, and the disabled.

Of course, almost all of the religious folk I know who are actively working on caring for needy people are very much in favor of progams like food stamps and Medicaid. They are all for private charity, but they know its limitations all too well.

So many older conservative believers I know will advocate against food stamps, welfare, etc.–but don’t you DARE touch Social Security/Medicare! I don’t think they realize that what they pay in doesn’t even begin to cover the actual cost, or what their lives would be like without it.

Yes, and *many* movies that would have been rated R are now PG or PG-13, and many that would have been rated X are now rated R.

But none of that is as problematic as that the ratings are inconsistent and even capricious. The ratings board won’t spell out what its standards are, even to filmmakers. So you have to be your own judge. The ratings system is a very, very poor substitute for parental supervision (of kids) or simple exercise of taste and discernment (for adults).

I’ve always thought it wrong that the ratings system has vastly more tolerance for violence than for sex or even nonsexual nudity. I can’t change the system, but I don’t have to take it seriously, either.

Llnn, there is a weird belief in this country that subsidies the government gives to the poor are evil, while subsidies to the middle and upper classes are a good thing.
There are countless examples of this I could cite.
Everybody except for the poorest of the poor believes that he or she is “a maker, not a taker,” and therefore deserving of every possible gravy train, regardless of how little he or she actually contributed in comparison to the benefits received.

There was a time when I would have been less inclined to support the federal government’s involvement in charity. Unfortunately, years of watching how Fundamentalists use money has convinced me that, as a rule, Fundamentalists cannot be trusted to tend to the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or care for the elderly. My impression is that they will squeeze the flock for money to build beautiful buildings, gymnasiums, coffee shops, Bible “colleges,” and to provide a comfortable living for the top guy, but will shortchange even their own members when it comes to paying those members for their labors for the church. In most cases, outsiders (if they’re lucky) might be the beneficiaries of monies taken up in the occasional “Benevolence Offering.” Of course if those people smoke, they shouldn’t ask for help because they should have used their cigarette money to buy food. Maybe it’s just greed, or maybe it’s partially the Gnostic heresy frequently referred to by Christian Socialist, but Fundies seem to have a talent for rationalizing themselves off the theological hook when it comes to meeting peoples’ physical needs. After all, if we spiritualize things, we can offer a physically ill homeless man the care of a Great Physician, a robe of righteousness, and the bread of life all for the price of a Chick tract.

To be fair, there are churches that do things such as operate or sponsor rescue missions and that do other good works. And thank God for that. Still, when it comes to church giving, no doubt many of us feel we gave a good deal of money over the years to very poor charities.

My current church, where I spend a lot of time because I love what they do, runs two ministry “apartments” in some low-income housing down the street from our location. We have monthly food distribution, via the local food bank, Bible clubs, a street hockey team, after school homework help, ESL classes for adults, and a mentoring program to push kids on to college. Oh, and an a.m. Mommy and Me for preschoolers. There are theme parties throughout the year, and daily summer activities that involve fun and academics. The church finances most of it, although we have some community groups who help, too. Getting the message of salvation through faith is important to us, but we believe in “Jesus with skin on.” By the way, the bulk of the volunteers who are senior citizens, and they work hard. There is also a couple from the church that lives in one of the apartments, and they are available 24/7 for the neighbors.

This is all bullshit. None of these actions do anything toward a testimony to unbelievers – if anything, enforcing these rules MAKES unbelievers, though most just change denominations.

Really, the only people to whom it hinders testimony, already claim to be men of the almighty. Namely the leaders.

PCC and their ilk are in a quite a pickle though. I know of a couple of colleges who “became liberal!” and have lost support, and more importantly, churches that motivated their youth to go to that college. It’s somewhat sad. One of them went from 6 dorms, over 1500 students, down to 300 students and two dorms. They lost their IFB conservative flare, and aren’t hip enough to out-liberty Liberty University.

And by “became liberal” I mean that in the above case, they started allowing pants and jeans and no ties for class. Still can’t go to movies or have TVs in the dorms.

I’m afraid that any loosening of the chains is going to remove their identity, and at that price, why the hell would you choose them over something like Liberty if you still what to go to a Christian college?

One time, this guy decided he was going to get saved. On his way to church, he saw the very man who had talked to him about Christ a week earlier walk into a movie theater. “They go to movie theaters too?” Thought the man. “If they go to movie theaters, they must also lie, cheat, steal and murder for pleasure. These people are no different from us scum.” The man, clearly disappointed, decided to walk past the steeple-building’s doorway. As he crossed the road, he got hit by a car, died and went to hell. All because this young worldly rebel wanted to watch E.T.

This all reminds me of a scene in Portofino. (Yeah, I think Franky Schaeffer is a crackpot with a mean streak a mile wide, but Portofino is still very funny, albeit kind of mean. :D)

Anyway, the family is eating dinner at their usual Portofino restaurant, and the mom ostentatiously refuses wine. Apparently she thinks this will make a positive witness-y impression on the young waitress, but all the waitress does is shrug her shoulders and roll her eyes, as if to say, “These crazy Americans!”

It’s been years since I read the novel, so I may not be remembering the scene quite correctly, but that’s how I think it went.

If you are looking to be a computer science teacher @ PCC, you better have attended a better institution than PCC. They require a Masters and prefer a Doctorate degree from an accredited institution for applicants. Appear to be willing to consider work experience as well, but thought it was funny they don’t give anyone accredited degress but require them of their staff.

PURITY. Do we have to ask these folks to read the GRACE report? The one that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that emphasis on purity re-victimizes the one in three or one in four women who have been sexually abused?

INCEST. Considering what the victims have been told repeatedly by their perpetrators, does the college make a difference between incest VICTIMS versus incest perpetrators? Or are we going through the usual “she must have done something…?

That was replying to Ricardo. I’m thinking of a case of a well known female politician here in northern Ireland who condemned homosexuality as an “abomination” but was at the same time having frequent sex (not even an “affair” with a young man, starting when he was about 14 or 15. Is hypocrisy a Spiritual perversion?

I was sort of hoping for an exception: that if the movie you were watching wasn’t violent, you could still watch it on DVD. But the comma after the word violent probably indicates that all PG movies are off-limits, violent or not. Are there any movies made for grown-ups nowadays that are rated G? It appears that G rated movies are all these faculty members are allowed to watch .

My parents wouldn’t let me read the Narnia series because there was a witch in them. A couple years ago when I posted a quote from C.S. Lewis on my fb page, a local Fundy pastor’s wife sent me a PM about her concern and a link to a website that claimed and tried to prove that he wasn’t a Christian. Sigh. So, yeah, a lot of the fundies I know really didn’t like Lewis. On the other hand, I, once I discovered him and read him on my own in college, at BJU strangely enough, have been inspired and challenged four years by what he wrote.

Fundies and C.S. Lewis have had a strange relationship. They don’t like him, but can’t help but embrace his works, at least some of them. Like Tolkien, he is not completely acceptable, but there is too much spirituality beneath the surface to deny it very long. And of course, Lewis’ life was not pristine. Darn those movies for telling the real stories! But if you can’t deal with it, ignore it.

Besides, the young people love Lewis, Tolkien, and Rawlings. If you are too strident, you may lose them!

So there is an uneasy balance. They don’t promote them. Where they feel they can they discourage or prohibit the books (Rawlings is new, so they can get away with it. But in a few years they won’t be able to!). They have tried to compete with those authors, but to little success. Some will try to limit contact to the authors’ most popular works and discourage reading the more reflective ones. Lewis had some fantastic observations in other books, but they weren’t kind to fundamentalist theology or attitudes.

So attitudes are somewhat mixed, and many ministries have decided they’d best be careful. Being too strident winds up killing ministries in the long run, no matter what gains are made in the short run.

In my IFB church, the Pastor has openly acknowledged his appreciation for some of Lewis’ works and even quoted him from the pulpit (with some disclaimer “though we don’t accept all of his theology”).

The mention of Rawlings makes me laugh. One of my sisters solemnly told me her daughter had read the books to see if they were suitable and she said they were not. On the basis of that, I was not to let my children read them. They already had, secretly, and loved them. Such pomposity.

Kindle search only turns up Naomi Rawlings Christian romance fluff that hasn’t even been released yet.

If Rawlings can be compared to Lewis & Tolkien I want to check him/her out. Pop culture tends to pass us by–life in the jungle–so I appreciate being updated. We’re enjoying our first term with internet!

Big thanks to whomever mentioned the book about Bono by Michka Assayas. Was able to download it yesterday, and I’m already 31% through that. (Up with a pukey child last night.)

Any reference to witches even if they were presented as evil was something my parents didn’t like. We didn’t have a television so my parents loved offering us books, but fairytales weren’t something they were very interested in reading with us. One series of books they liked were Thorton Burgess’s books – Reddy the Fox and other creatures of Merry Meadows (not sure if I’m remembering that correctly).

The fact is that to Grow in Christ we have to leave the schoolmaster. We have to recognize that the schoolmaster doesn’t have all the answers and never did. The schoolmaster was sometimes wrong.

As “adults,” we are to grow in Christ. Guess what adults do in the real world? They make their own decisions. They make mistakes and learn from them. They don’t go running back to their schoolbooks or to their teachers every time they have a question. And since the whole of the Law is bound up in, “Love God. Love others as you love yourself,” it is time to put the books on the shelf and live life.

So you go to the movies! And you discover that some movies lift you up, while others darken your soul. Sometimes the same movie can do both at the same time — that’s life. We suffer misfortune, and so we know how to comfort those in distress. We make mistakes and we learn from them. We learn how to forgive ourselves and to forgive others.

The Bible doesn’t have all the answers. No one even has all the questions! Trying to fit everything into a regimented, legalistic frame of mind shows how infantile and inept these spiritual children are. They aren’t adults. They never will be.

Not only do they treat the students like infants by making all their choices for them, but the adult staff too. No one is expected to actually be an adult and make the choices for themselves and their family. They are still expected to eat pablum throughout their lives – living their life to please their manogawd.

Your assumption might work if it were applied, but BJU at least doesn’t consider the students to be adults.

I distinctly remember Tony Miller saying, “Now, boy & girl students, your parents have entrusted you to us, so the [voluminous] rules we have are there to protect you and guide you just like your parents would.”

Contrast that with The Talk at BBC in Scranton, PA attended by my sister: “You all are adults. Now, act like it.”

A teacher at the school I work with was discussing the Latin phrase in loco parentis with the class. He had just learned it at grad school and he was explaining to the students how he is responsible for them when they are in his care. Of course, they are elementary-aged children. I’m familiar with the phrase because BJU used it all the time referencing us college students, over 18.

I know there were overprotective parents who loved the BJU sheltered and controlled their college aged children, but it’s not natural and it totally goes against the whole concept of raising men and women for Christ who are able to stand as individual believers in the liberty provided by Jesus. It just shows fear and desire for control and a distrust of the power of God when they refused to let students grow up.

PCC has so many entertainment options on campus-rock climbing, sailing, water park-that you never have to leave to interface with the community. I spent my free time at the state university tutoring migrant farm worker kids and perfecting my Spanish to serve others. Still doing it 35 years later.

When you teach children, “in loco parentis” is a very valid concept. With young adults … no.
By your late teens/early 20s, you need to start figuring things out for yourself, especially if your own parents are a little bit “loco” (some of you will know what I’m talking about).

This reminds me of a conversation I once had with a senior Vietnamese colleague about what he considered to be the superior aspects of Southeast Asian culture. One was family relationships: “My son is forty, and I still tell him what to do.”
I was in my early forties at the time, and all I could think was, “Thank God I’m not Vietnamese!”

Is there a reason grownups aren’t allowed to make their own choices for their own lives? Oh yeah, that mythical thing called “testimony,” because the gas station attendant really cares that you aren’t watching any Harry Potter because God.

As written, that alcohol prohibition precludes cologne, certain mouthwashes, and pure vanilla extract. Since I use vodka to make piecrust, I guess I can’t make any pies for tomorrow’s potluck. I also make cranberry sauce with Cointreau. Darn.

Another way to have a less glutinous crust is to use pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour or bread flour. Pastry flour is ground from a different selection of wheat varieties that have less gluten in their endosperm.

Also, I’ve learned the fat (shortening, butter, or lard) and other ingredients should be as cold as possible, so the fat pockets don’t melt while you’re mixing and rolling out the dough.

My beard is now more salt than pepper. Mostly I keep it trimmed short. It used to be much longer. So was my hair (also rapidly silvering). Now I keep it fairly short. If I let it grow now it sticks out sideways and I look like the Jeff Daniels character from “Dumb and Dumber” but not as intelligent.

I was just about to ask where on earth you were from that the weatherman would say that 😀 I’m Canadian too, and I’d be shocked to hear that also. I don’t remember advice like that the time they cancelled school due to -40 when I was in university…

MiriamD, this winter our town lost two young people on two different occasions because they’d been drinking and wandered out in sub-zero temps. I guess that much alcohol makes you not notice how cold you really are.

On another note, we are celebrating summer in the middle of February over here. Tank tops on Valentine’s Day. I hope we don’t get snow on Independence Day to make up for it.

I found this post from 2012 while looking into Shoemaker. These quotes fit Darrell’s post title perfectly. There is so much here to comment on, but my favorite is this: While the school isn’t for everyone, Shoemaker found the Christian environment, with its traditional curriculum, rigid rules and tough-love discipline, an ideal extension of his childhood years.
Christian environment=rigid rules. Been there. Glad to be learning differently.

I knew I should have used the quotation marks! I sinned twice — by being lazy and by failing to obey punctuation rules — nay, thrice, for I failed to cite my source — and I became a stumbling block and damaged my testimony. Ahhh. The many pitfalls of the internet. A veritable morass of sin.

Jesus was accused of being a drunk. Who accuses a person that doesn’t touch alcohol of being a drunk? It’s obvious that Jesus made and drank alcohol.

It’s amazing to me after sitting through thousands of Fundy services on non-Biblical things like TV and pants on women, and every single one of the pastor’s personal hang-ups – that Jesus being accused of being a drunk never came up.

It’s axiomatic that Jesus making wine at the wedding was an alcoholic beverage. Nobody brings out the “grape juice” in any particular order. The only reason to schedule the quality of the beverage is if it’s alcoholic. Anybody that’s ever had a drink knows that after a certain amount, it doesn’t matter what you’re drinking. Jesus made and drank alcohol. Get over it.

The conclusion you stated in your last paragraph is pretty much the same conclusion I reached while still Catholic. Following my return to the states and becoming involved with a Fundamentalist church, I spent years listening to the same new wine/old wine teaching we’ve all heard. Ironically, while in the nut house wing of Fundamentalism, after a service I asked a Messianic Jew the church had invited to speak his opinion on that question. The gentleman seemed to think the Fundamentalist position was ridiculous. Frankly, they possibly didn’t scrutinize the man too thoroughly before offering him the opportunity to speak. Say what you will about Fundamentalists, but they love Messianic Jews.

Per 1Peter 2: 13 Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme;
14 Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.
So we should be under the laws that are in our city , state and country.
On the the subject of President Barack Hussein Obama. He is not king yet so other people / politicians have a say in what happens in America. However I am sure that you know that the kings heart is in the hand of the Lord.

Calling the President by his middle name is a dog whistle in American politics. IMHO he is probably the best President in my 57 years on earth.

He has brought the possibility of universal health care to the U.S. and I’ll always be grateful.

So if you’re coming here to hate him on line, shut the f#ck up. I’m getting tired of the haters and I’m out of patience with those who hate him because they try to imply that he’s a Muslim when, in fact, he’s a Christian. Really, they hate him because he is black. Goddamn I’m out of patience with that sort of thinking.